Facebook has revolutionized the social networking scene many times over. Internet marketers and developers worldwide are cashing in on Facebook every single day, and we’re not talking about chump change either! Several hundred million dollars is made through Facebook alone, and that figure is sure to rise with the recently added Facebook PPC program.
The main difference between Facebook marketing, and MySpace marketing, is the fact that with MySpace, you aren’t allowed to blatantly sell or promote anything without staying under the radar a bit. With Facebook, there are literally several ways you can cash in ethically and easily right on their site. This, and due to the fact that MySpace is “sooo 2006”, is one of the reasons that Facebook has recently surpassed MySpace in traffic.
That’s quite the milestone to reach, and we’re talking about millions of potential customers.
If you’re kicking around the idea of launching some kind of marketing campaign on Facebook, but aren’t sure where to start, here are five different ways to kick-start your brain:
1. Create a Facebook Blog – There are hundreds of thousands of these already, but to truly take advantage of this, you need to be unique and creative (which goes the same for any method mentioned here). Once you have a large audience, you can then turn around and sell ads and sponsorships to marketers who want to promote their products.
2. Consulting – There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of companies out there that would kill for a good Facebook Application developer. Since Facebook is so new, the supply of great developers is low. If you have this skill, you would be stupid not to explore this opportunity. Rumors are that this skill is a $200-$500 an hour gig. See the potential? If you don’t have this skill yet, then I highly suggest you learn it!
3. Develop Your Own Apps – Some might say, “Why develop an App for someone else, when you could do it for yourself?” – Good argument. In that case, why are you still reading this and not working on the hottest new application that everyone will want to share? Grow you users to the tens of thousands (and more), and partner with an Ad network to sell advertising. It’s almost a license to print money, and you’ll be happy you took the time to do it. Imagine if it made it to the top ten Facebook Applications page – you would be pretty well off for quite some time!
4. Facebook PPC – If you’re skilled in the PPC arena and familiar with Adwords and YSM, then it’s safe to say that you could take that valuable skill and tap into Facebook’s own PPC program. Many people have made small fortunes doing this already – the trick is knowing what to promote. But what makes it so attractive is the fact that you can actually dial in your demographics down to sub-level, eg –“Canadian Women, Ages 18-35, Single, Who Like Classic Rock”. That’s pretty neat, and if you know how to work it, then you could be padding your bank account as we speak.
5. Write A Book About Facebook – Yeah, it really is a good idea, especially if you know the Development side of things. A well written Facebook Application Development book would probably fetch the author millions, and would earn him/her instant credibility over night. There aren’t many (if any) on the market yet, so there is still room for people who want to take it one. Publishing companies who know what’s hot and what’s not would jump all over you if you had one in development. Get to it!
